Democracy Now! has long covered the issue of climate change. We reported from the U.N. Climate Change Conferences in Warsaw, Doha, Durban, Cancún, and Copenhagen, and from the World Peoples’ Summit on Climate Change hosted by Bolivia. We’ve interviewed many of the world’s top scientists, writers, policy makers, activists, indigenous leaders and academics on the issue. We continue to follow the environmental movements to directly confront the root causes of global warming, and to advocate for climate justice, and sustainable alternatives.

In March, a federal jury convicted environmental activist Tim DeChristopher of two felony counts for disrupting the auction of more than 100,000 acres of federal land for oil and gas drilling. He faces up to 10 years in prison. Last weekend he spoke at the Power Shift 2011 conference and urged youth climate activists to make more sacrifices. "We hold the power right here to create our vision of a healthy and just world, if we are willing...

At this week’s Power Shift 2011 conference in Washington, D.C., longtime environmental activist Bill McKibben critiqued how the United States has failed to take steps to address climate change. He is the founder of the environmental organization 350.org—the name references the 350 parts per million many scientists say is the safe limit for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. "Think about our own country — historically, the biggest...

More than 10,000 people converged in Washington, DC, this past week to discuss, organize, mobilize and protest around the issue of climate change. While tax day Tea Party gatherings of a few hundred scattered around the country made the news, this massive gathering, Power Shift 2011, was largely ignored by the media.

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the worst maritime oil spill in U.S. history. Last year on April 20, the Deepwater Horizon rig, leased by oil giant BP, exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and releasing nearly 200 million gallons of oil, tens of millions of gallons of natural gas and 1.8 million gallons of other chemicals. A year later, how much has changed? “[Another spill] could happen again tomorrow. And if it did, the...

The budget deal approved by Congress cuts $1.6 billion from the budget of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency—a 16 percent decrease; reduces funding for a planned climate desk within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and eliminates the position of assistant to the president for energy and climate change. Ever since taking control of the House, Republican lawmakers have taken a number of steps to curtail the Obama...

The crisis in Japan has refueled the rigorous global debate about the viability of nuclear power. Japan remains in a "state of maximum alert" as the experts scramble to contain radiation that is leaking from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. Nuclear energy remains a controversial topic in climate change discourse, as environmental activists argue how to best reduce the amount of greenhouse gases being emitted into the...

Environmental activist Tim DeChristopher was convicted last week of two felony counts for disrupting an auction of more than 100,000 acres of federal land for oil and gas drilling in December 2008. Award-winning journalist Naomi Klein talks about why she signed on to a public letter of support for DeChristopher. "What did Tim DeChristopher do wrong? They said that he participated in an auction and without the intention to pay," Klein...

Award-winning journalist Naomi Klein has been reporting on global warming and the climate justice movement for years. “My fear is that climate change is the biggest crisis of all,” Klein says. “If we don’t come up with a positive vision of how climate change can make our economies and our world more just, more livable, cleaner, fairer, then this crisis will be exploited to militarize our economies, to create fortress continents. And...

A federal jury in Salt Lake City has convicted environmental activist Tim DeChristopher of two felony counts for disrupting the auction of more than 100,000 acres of federal land for oil and gas drilling. DeChristopher was charged in December 2008 with infiltrating a public auction and disrupting the Bush administration’s last-minute move to auction off oil and gas exploitation rights on vast swaths of federal land. A student at the time,...